Back in August I wrote a review of the debut issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and declared it a zine to keep an eye on. Issue Two of HFQ appeared at the end of September, and I’ll admit I’ve been way too busy to dig in to it. Finally, however, with my reviewer responsibilities for Black Gate (nearly) fulfilled, I’ve had the time to stop by and see how the second issue of this burgeoning ezine stacks up to the first. Each issue contains three shorts, and two poems — as usual I’ve confined my review to fiction.

This issue opens with Euan Harvey’s “The Hand of Afaz,” a story about justice, fanaticism, and corruption. It concerns a kind of judicial enforcer, Farid, who brings in a suspected parricide for execution. The story has a Near Eastern feel, and great world-building details (though I found the use of actual historical dynastic names such as the Umayads and Abasids inappropriate and confusing in a secondary world fantasy) such as the evocative names of gods and their aspects — ‘Ahret as Devouring Maw,’ ‘Hormuz Greatest and Best.’ It is in an aspect of the god of justice and punishment, ‘Afaz in His Aspect of Axe and Lash,’ that Farid must act, choosing between the letter of his duty and his loyalty to his superiors. A nice story with an appealing moral dimension.

William Gerke’s “Monster in the Mountains” begins with Gowther, a man of beast-like appearance and strength, journeying through a blizzard on a mountain. Sheltering at an isolated holding, Gowther is attacked by his hosts, and soon learns that the family who tried to waylay him are themselves victims of a controlling evil. Gowther, bestial in appearance, is heroic in action — unlike the humans he sets out to save. A good story, where not every monster is as it appears.

In “The Waking of Angantyr” Marie Brennan gives us a tale of inheritance and vengeance. Hervor, a fighting woman of low birth, has been summoned to a remote isle, and the barrow mound of thirteen murdered warriors. Based on the saga legend of the cursed sword Tyrfing, Brennan uses poetic language to achieve a moving tale of familial responsibility and destiny. Another winner.

Overall some great reading for fans of adventure fantasy, with three very different takes on secondary world Heroic Fantasy. And not only is it great to see Heroic Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery represented in the short form, but it’s nice to see a market that caters to longer works of short fiction. So many magazines and even ezines these days are lowering their word counts on stories — so that 4,000 word tales are almost the new standard, and 3,000 or even 2,000 word caps are not uncommon. So, even if said market was friendly toward secondary world adventure fantasy (a big if!), the word caps alone would preclude the sorts of traditional tales the genre was known for, stories that offer a fuller plot and take the time to proceed through multiple, often action-oriented scenes. You can’t really have those sorts of stories coming in at under 4,000 words.

When you’re done reading HFQ#2, be sure to head over to The Cimmerian to check out an interview with Adrian Simmons and David Farney, the guys behind Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

Over at Black Gate today I just posted a quick news announcement about the recent Warhammer 40,000 movie project. Ultramarines will be an animated/CGI hybrid movie and straight-to-DVD release — and I’m sure it will beat the pants off the Mutant Chronicles film, which couldn’t save itself even with the presence of Hellboy and Malkovich.

Anyway, over at the BG I speculate a bit as to why it’s taken so long for the 800 pound gorilla of the gaming world to get its own movie, and then I talk further about why animation is hand’s down the right choice for this project.

I’m certainly looking forward to watching this when it comes out and reliving a bright corner of my wayward youth spent in the “grim darkness of the future.”

Whereas last October found me in Bradbury country, this time around I was busy finishing review books for the next Black Gate, and sneaking in a few anthologies and novels at the end of the month to serve as a change of pace.

As I mentioned last month, I have the pleasure of reviewing the two new Harold Lamb collections from Bison Books, the fifth and sixth books in a project by Lamb scholar and Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones. Last month I read Lamb’s ‘Crusader’ tales in Swords From the West. I began my October reading with its companion volume, Swords From the Desert, containing tales focused on Eastern protagonists. Another uniformly excellent collection, with all the breathless pace, master plotting, and authentic setting fans of Lamb’s adventure fiction have come to expect. Although around half the size of Swords From the West, the two books combined number something like 900 pages and, no matter how good something is, a change of pace is always welcome.

Ben Counter’s Daemon World wasn’t exactly a change of pace, but it was a fun, quick read set in the grim dystopia of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. It was also the final book I had to read for my BG duties and, once it was finished, I more or less cut loose by grabbing several anthologies I’ve been wanting to have a look at. More on those in future installments, once I’ve completed them. I also read several of the fantastic Dark Horse Conan comic series from Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord, in graphic novel form — these too I’ll be talking about in greater depth later.

I’m on the fence about continuing with Iain M. Bank’s Against A Dark Background, which I started back in the beginning of September and set aside in favor of BG review books. After 200 pages, I’m just not very interested in it — quite unusual as I usually eat Banks’ stuff up, with or without the ‘M.’ This one might fall into the ‘life’s too short’ category and be abandoned.

Needing a break from fantasy and adventure fiction in general, I picked up Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel that the literati have developed a stiffy for — giving it a Pulitzer no less. Well, it was a good book, no denying, and as much as I get occasionally irked by literary SF novels that are held aloof from the genre ghetto by virtue of what marketing category their authors fall into, I didn’t let it influence my enjoyment of the book. Very bleak, but with an underlying note of hope in the decency of humanity, The Road is a moving iteration of the post-apocalyptic tale and one I thoroughly recommend. And it’s a science fiction novel — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I finished the month with a quick read of Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man — itself a novel that probably would have been billed as something else if its author hadn’t already been pegged as a genre giant. It’s a short, sharp meditation on religion and the psychology of religion, that tells the story of a man with a martyr complex and a fascination with Judaism and Christianity that goes back in time to witness the crucifixion. He falls in with John the Baptist, makes a pilgrimage to Nazareth and the home of Joseph and Mary in search of Jesus  . . . and things aren’t quite as our protagonist expected. An interesting book, and one I’d hate to spoil by revealing the engaging twist at its heart.

So, that was October. I hope to have some more reviews appear on this site before year’s end, so future months should start including a higher percentage of that sort of thing. But, for now, I’m relieved again to be reading whatever I feel like, and suspect I’ll go a bit wild reading an eclectic mix of stuff before I again settle down to read with purpose.

Over at Grasping For the Wind, John Ottinger has asked a parcel of book bloggers the question “What books have the best endings in science fiction, fantasy, and horror?” My own answer is over there, in which I single out Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End for praise — and I wasn’t the only one to pick it. In fact, there are several books that get mentioned more than once, proof enough I think that they really are some of the significant endings genre fiction has produced.

The post is full of spoilers, obviously, and I avoided reading some of it myself in order to preserve the surprise of the some of the books mentioned over there that I have yet to read.

So, Halloween — for me that means zombie movies. And not just any zombie movies, but zombie movies of the George A. Romero stripe. I’ve never been a big fan of horror films in general but zombies — well, zombies are another thing entirely. Zombie films embody all the things I want in entertainment; post-apocalyptic scenarios that blend the ingenuity of survival stories with the bleak despondency of the end of the world. I mean, what kid hasn’t fantasized about boarding up the house and taking pot shots at his zombified neighbors?

The whole, massive sub-genre can trace it’s humble origins to a low-budget, black-and-white movie from 1968 — Night of the Living Dead. Subversive in more ways than one at the time, this little movie eventually fond it’s way into the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.

And you can watch the whole thing right here, from youtube:

What’s with people that only read one kind of thing? Ever roll your eyes when you get to talking about reading with one of them and they tell you how many times they’ve reread Harry Potter or Jane Austen, but they’ve never tried a mystery, or a historical adventure, or something by a non-English-speaking writer? They’ll rave about Stephen King, but they’ve never read Poe. Or maybe they are experts on Napoleonic history with a non-fiction bias that prevents them even considering a novel by Cornwell or O’Brian. They are the specialists, and I don’t understand them — I’m not even sure, really, if they are ‘readers’ by my definition:

To me, a real reader is a voracious omnivore; metaphorically a gaunt, hollow-eyed ghoul with ink-stained fingers and sharpened teeth who knows an insatiable hunger so keenly painful it has in fact become a pleasure of sublime proportions. Our ghoul/reader will eat and eat and eat to the point of dieing, and ask for more with his last breath. Real readers are all a little bit insane — and they hope that no one ever finds the cure for their condition.

But, lest you think mine is an argument founded on some sort of smug exclusivity, mosey over to Black Gate to read my full article on Specialist and Generalist Readers and notice that I’m legitimately perplexed. Are the two broad camps of reading styles the result of childhood experiences, or marketing? Are some people wired to be generalists or specialists? Are there even really two primary categories of reading types, or more of a continuous scale? You’ll find more questions than answers in my essay — but, generally speaking, that is what we generalists are generally known for.

Shameless brag time — two of my stories, Davy’s Toy Box and The Goon Eternal, have been selected by the brilliant and discerning connoisseurs of all things flash over at Every Day Fiction for their second annual ‘Best of’ anthology. I had the pleasure of appearing in EDF’s first anthology as well, and it’s a really excellent book filled with a huge variety of voices and styles — like a massive buffet with a hundred fantastic dishes.

It’s always great when something that has appeared only in e-form gets set in print — and knowing my pieces will have ninety eight other kick-ass stories for company is the icing on the cake.

While on the subject of shameless bragging — two new anthologies have just found their way onto my vanity shelf (what, like you don’t have one of those?): Shadows & Light from Pill Hill Press, and the long anticipated Dead Souls. Haven’t had a chance to read either, but they look great and I’m ear-to-ear over the fact that I’m in the both of them.

As I did with the previous season of Dexter, I’ve decided to write about season four in three chunks, one blog post to follow each fourth episode — thematically an appropriate place as a season of Dexter generally follows a three act structure. Which means, of course, each fourth episode is going to offer some big climax or revelation that makes for perfect blog fodder.

And big time spoilers — you have been warned.

Big time warned.

So, last night’s episode ‘Dex Takes a Holiday,’ didn’t disappoint in the climax department — we had both the culmination of the whole ‘Dexter needs his space’ theme that has been building since the first episode, and a big banging surprise in the Lundy-Trinity plot-line — namely Lundy and Deb getting gunned down by an unseen assailant (who probably looks a whole lot like John Lithgow).

I’d say episode 4 was the best so far, and hopefully marks the season hitting its stride. I thought the first few episodes laid the ‘new father is sleepy’ thing on with all the subtly of a spackle knife — pushing Dex past the point of reasonable exhaustion and painting his wife as some sort of oblivious and unreasonable task master. Yes, it made for a bit of cuteness as New Dad Dex yo-yoed between late nights with the kid, long days at the office, and extra curricular activities involving yards of saran wrap and surgical saws. But, as annoying as Rita can be as a character, it felt like a stretch to suggest that someone with her experience raising children — and obvious concern for her husband — would cheerfully let him shoulder so much of the load and even have the gall to suggest Dexter hadn’t been as ‘together’ with the family as he should be. The writers could have done this a bit better — didn’t he just get into an accident because of sleep deprivation and she’s haranguing him the next episode about not doing enough?

Speaking of which, great little mini-arc with Dex potentially losing a body. I’ve always thought he was rather vulnerable when transporting his kills — just one serious car accident away from getting caught. Having it happen at the end of the first episode was a nice touch, and got the whole season rolling with some immediate suspense of the season 2 variety. Further points awarded to episode 1’s ‘tonight’s the night’ shtick at the beginning, and the skewed credit sequence of missed mosquitoes, broken laces, and stained shirts that shows just how off his game Dex was at the start of the season.

Trinity has proven an interesting presence, and Lithgow doesn’t disappoint — managing to exude creepy menace without any sort of haminess. Trinity’s MO is interesting and suitably dark, but I hope the writers are smart enough not to spin out the mystery of it for too long. It seems rather obvious that the Trinity killer is reenacting his family history — sister either a suicide or killed by Trinity or their father (my bet is on Dad), mother jumping to her death, and finally Trinity killing his father . Last night’s episode with Trinity picking a fight from a random stranger, and letting himself get punched around, only reinforces that his third victim is a stand-in for an abusive father (who is surely to whom he offers a whiskey ablution in episode three). Trinity is reenacting his early life, and stuck repeating it.

Dexter in suburbia offers some more fish-out-of-water fun for a guy that just doesn’t get how us mundanes navigate the weird rituals of social interaction that vex our every step. Dex’s new environment has everything from swimming pools to car pools — and nosy neighbors willing to set up high-powered halogens and organize a militia whenever something threatens the suburban status quo. Episode three’s vandal shared a bit of Dexter’s fish-out-of-water nature — a damaged man having seen past the veneer of civility that governs the manicured and picket-fenced world — but in the end Dex comes down on him like a hammer to protect himself and, by extension now, his family.

But what is really interesting about Dexter’s confronting the vandal is of course the parallel with the Trinity killer’s threats to kill his second victim’s children in the same episode — Dexter, who understands all too well that ‘fear is a powerful motivator’ uses the same tactic, sending a bit of a reminder to an audience that has been no doubt vicariously enjoying his handling of the situation thus far that, yes Virginia, Dex is a monster.

I will admit that I saw Frank Lundy’s death coming, if not from miles away, than at least by a good few football field’s lengths — but it worked well and still registered as something of a surprise when it happened. The surprise was more Deb getting shot than anything — poor Lundy just had martyr written all over him from the beginning. A good motivator for Dex and Deb to crack the Trinity case, and at least superstar FBI agent Lundy goes out having been right about the hunt and, by virtue of being attacked, proving he was close to his quarry. He got the girl, too — bravo Frank, you’re way cooler than Anton.

Speaking of Anton — there’s his sort of buddy Quinn, last year’s red herring, trying to puzzle-out how to handle Dexter’s witnessing of his cash grab. Quinn, a man with good taste in women and horrible taste in music, is surprisingly amusing as he tries to curry favor with Dex, and his ‘this is how it is’ refutation of the ‘crooked cop’ label worked for me. He’s certainly not in the same category of moral failing as, say, a serial murderer. And speaking of serial murderers — poor old Quinn apparently can’t remember not to mention the hush-hush and unofficial Trinity killer investigation going on when there is a gorgeous topless reporter on his back. Actually, I guess I can’t really blame him for that.

And then there is Batista and LaGuerta — seeing the two of them embrace is like watching Grover hook-up with Oscar the Grouch. Which isn’t a good thing, if you were wondering. Doing the obvious ploy of throwing these two together (hey, they both speak spanish and neither of them has anything to do this season!) and giving them a cutesy little ‘hidden’ affair feels forced, lazy, and pretty much undermines what little respect the audience has for them. Everybody likes Batista, because he’s a Teddy-Bear with a hat affectation, and everybody hates LaGuerta, for reasons too numerous to mention (at least she stopped hitting on Dexter — aye carumba!), but putting the two together makes them both . . . pathetic. Really, them both asking Dex for advice in last night’s episode felt like High School all over again, only with smaller stakes.

But what last night’s episode really delivered on was a thematic climax. With the annoying family gone and Dexter breathing a sigh of relief, he goes off to hunt a cop who killed her own family in cold blood — all to be free. Can he, or can’t he, relate? The cat-and-mouse between the two was handled nicely, and Dexter’s provocation of their final confrontation exhibited the kind of lateral thinking that makes for so many interesting twists in the show. But finally it was the revelation — spoken at the ‘moment of truth’ when Dexter is his most alive and honest — that Dexter would rather risk getting caught than be without his family that is the true climax of the first act of season 4. He does love them, inconvenient and perplexing as they may be, and this shows how his character has changed subtly since the ‘little wooden boy’ was introduced to us in season 1.

A final word should be said about a big character missing from the last two seasons of Dexter — Miami. Now, sometimes Long Beach kind of works — I mean, it has palm trees and water, just like Miami, right? — and sometimes it really doesn’t. Go back and look at those first seasons of Dexter to see what I mean — you can feel the heat of the place, and smell the Cuban food wafting over from the yard next door. There was much more of a sense of place and style in earlier seasons, and the absence of that does lend these later seasons a somewhat less authentic feel. I don’t think that’s a deal breaker — but it does mean that these seasons are less than they could (and should) be.

And another thing — how about some continuity references for us long-time fans? I understand the need for a clean slate with each season — but has anyone even so much as uttered the words ‘Bay Harbor Butcher’ since season 2? Shouldn’t Prado have suspected Dex as being the butcher? Shouldn’t Prado himself be mentioned or name dropped at least once? Or Rita hint at Dex’s supposed substance abuse problems, or the kids once being kidnapped by a crazy British firebug? Stuff like that reinforces the illusion of reality, and it’s a shame there isn’t more of it in evidence in subsequent seasons of Dexter.

Oh, and Harry. The actor is consistently great, and I liked the premise of his ‘visitations’ in moderation, but Harry having a chat with Dex three times an episode has become a bit formula at this point — and half the time it isn’t anything that couldn’t be handled with a Dex voice-over. What this does is kill the dramatic potential of the exchange — so when the big climax comes later in this season as it did in the last and Harry talks Dex through some dilemma we, the audience, will be saying ‘ho hum, there’s dead Harry talking his kid’s ear off again.’ Flashbacks to young Dexter were much, much better, and something I miss. I mean, Michael C. Hall spent less time talking to dead people when he ran a funeral home!

And, purely as a thought exercise and proof that producers should at least occasionally consult me for ideas, you know what would show some real innovation? How about making Doakes Dexter’s invisible conscience for a season? Don’t tell me the premise wouldn’t automatically make the show twice as interesting.

But, overall, Dexter continues to deliver what audiences have come to love from the show — dark thrills, wow-worthy surprises, and explorations of a first-rate character in Dexter himself. The writers have never been afraid to really advance the plot, and they keep Dexter evolving right along with it, which is a rare and wonderful thing in television. The new family, the child, and the new nemesis-slash-role-model — a man who does what Dexter does and has done it more successfully than anyone else — has created a whole new slew of possibilities and complications, something the writers have done well to capitalize on. I have to say the new season has me hooked and, at the end of the day, that is how I know whether Dexter is doing what it’s supposed to do — when I can’t wait to see the next episode.